


Downpour

by forthegreatergood



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Pining, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 22:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Crowley and the cold make for one hell of a combination, and Aziraphale could have gone another six thousand years without knowing it.“You show up after hours, out of the blue and frozen half-solid, drip a gallon of rain water all over my kitchenette, and all I get by way of explanation is a half-heartedngh,” Aziraphale sighed.“‘s what I get for--” Crowley shuddered, and Aziraphale reached up and tugged the blankets back into place. “--taking public transport.”





	Downpour

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Giant shout-out to [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for betaing!

“Who the devil could that be?” Aziraphale sighed. The bell rang again, an insistent buzz that set his teeth on edge. It was like someone was leaning on it, almost. At this time of night, and in this weather--it didn’t bear thinking about, what sort of book they’d be looking for. He almost assuredly didn’t have it, and if he did, he even more assuredly was not going to sell it to them.

He set his cocoa down and put his novel aside. Someone with a message from home office would have just manifested inside the shop and called for him. Whoever was at the door could doubtless be put off with the strongly-worded angelic suggestion that they come back tomorrow, when the shop was actually open. 

Aziraphale plucked an umbrella from the stand by the register, just in case. He’d accumulated a dozen of the things over the years, between people leaving them behind in the shop and then never coming back for them and Crowley scattering them in his wake like he did anything else that wasn’t physically attached to his corporation, and in any case he wasn’t a monster. If it was just some poor soul trying to get out of the rain, he was perfectly willing to make their night a little less sodden by giving them an umbrella and calling them a cab.

Aziraphale turned the light on just as the bell sounded again, and he gritted his teeth and marshaled his patience. “Yes, yes! I’m coming!”

He unlocked the door and turned the knob, and a sudden gust of wind blew it open with a cold fury that might have knocked Aziraphale back a pace if it weren’t for the sight of his after-hours customer. As it was, seeing Crowley leaning heavily against the wall and looking like he’d been carved of marble and suffering rooted Aziraphale to the spot, and a wooden door and a stiff breeze were hardly going to make him give ground in the face of that. It took a bolt of lightning to get him moving again, turning the sky above the street from night to day for an eye-searing split second.

“Crowley,” he breathed, reaching for the demon. His skin was as cold as the rain that struck his back as the wind picked up, and Aziraphale shivered just from the spray that settled on his face. Crowley let the angel pull him inside the bookshop. So far as Aziraphale could tell, all his concentration was focused on keeping himself upright, no energy to spare for his usual snapped assertions that he didn’t need a nursemaid or studied avoidance of a helping hand. 

Aziraphale closed the door behind them, locked it, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, put a ward on it. He felt the answering surge of power around the bookshop’s perimeter, the few little defenses he’d bothered with all tying into and reinforcing one another. It wouldn’t stop anyone--any _thing_ \--really bound and determined to get into the shop, but it would slow them down, and Aziraphale would know they were coming. He turned back to Crowley, his heart in his throat.

“Are you hurt? What happened?” he demanded, plucking at Crowley’s jacket. He didn’t see any blood or, worse, ichor, but Crowley’s damnable insistence on wearing all black whenever he could get away with it was working against them now--the cloth was already soaked, and it wasn’t until Aziraphale pulled his hands away and saw only clean water on them that he could be sure he hadn’t discovered some terrible wound. “Crowley, answer me, please!”

His skin was too pale--that horrible shade of parchment white that Aziraphale hadn’t seen on him since the Spanish Inquisition--and his eyes were unfocused and unseeing. After a torturously long moment of waiting for a response, Aziraphale realized he wasn’t going to get one.

“Come along, Crowley.” He took Crowley firmly but gently by the elbow and guided him into the back of the shop. The light in the kitchenette was better, and there were towels, and if Crowley really was hurt, he could… Well, he could do something, couldn’t he?

It was the work of a moment to strip Crowley of his jacket and vest, and Aziraphale was torn between being unspeakably relieved at finding no great holes rent in the shirt below, no evidence of an attack or an injury he might not be able to heal, and being tremendously unsettled by Crowley’s complete lack of resistance to it. It was like the stalking, prowling, sulking demon who made it his life’s work to drive Aziraphale to distraction had been spirited away and replaced with a lifelike doll, beautiful and passive and utterly horrible.

Aziraphale took a deep breath and ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, checking for knots or lumps or--or whatever the other signs of a head injury were. He might have been struck by a hailstone, or slipped in the driving rain, or been clubbed over the back of the head by someone he trusted--not that Crowley really _trusted_ anyone--or anything, really. What would even happen if Aziraphale tried to miracle a concussion away, with a demon’s corporation? The few times he’d ever seen Crowley hurt, he hadn’t let Aziraphale near him. No, that exquisite torment of a demon had slunk off to God knows where and not turned back up until he was whole again, leaving Aziraphale to spend the interim alternately worried sick and infuriated that Crowley would leave him to worry himself sick instead of letting him help.

Aziraphale found nothing amiss with Crowley’s skull and wanted to shake him, wanted to crush him into a hug, wanted to cry. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Crowley wasn’t injured, and all right, that was something, but it left him little else to go on. Aziraphale took Crowley’s face in his hands.

“Crowley, please, I need you to tell me what’s happened,” he said, watching Crowley’s face for any sign of understanding or response and getting nothing.

But then Crowley sighed and closed those serpent’s eyes and leaned into him, and Aziraphale swallowed. 

_Idiot._ Panicky, useless idiot. Things like this were exactly why Crowley didn’t trust him to help, why Crowley didn’t let an angel’s clumsy hands anywhere near him.

Heat. Warmth. Crowley was a serpent, wasn’t he? And the storm had come up so suddenly, and it was the sort of thing that saw birds struck right out of the sky, dead of cold-shock with their wings still stretched wide to ride the wind that had killed them…

Aziraphale cursed himself for a fool and pulled off Crowley’s shirt, grabbed a handful of towels from the cupboard, and began scrubbing him dry.

“I’ve an electric blanket upstairs, you’ll be right as rain in no time at all, I promise,” he said, almost as much to himself as to Crowley. He paused at the waistband of Crowley’s jeans and realized the futility of it. Tight as they were, there was no getting them off without cutting them, not with the denim soaked through and Crowley permitting rather than assisting. Aziraphale miracled them off, took care of the socks and boots while he was at it, and kept going with the towels. Crowley would understand once he was warm again, once he was cognizant of the necessity of it all.

An awful voice in the back of his head whispered that this was his punishment for wondering, for wanting: Crowley stripped bare, in his arms, unresponsive and cold as death. Aziraphale pushed it aside, angry at himself for thinking it. He was an angel--if God ever grew angry enough with him to punish him, there’d be no guessing about it and probably precious little of him left afterwards.

Aziraphale wrapped Crowley in the biggest towel he had and tucked him into the chair closest to the little space heater. It might have been easier to bring Crowley to the blankets and the radiator upstairs, but there was a certain hyperarticulation to Crowley’s frame that Aziraphale barely trusted when he was drunk but still moving under his own power and insisting he was fine. Trying to get him up a flight of stairs while he was barely standing didn’t warrant consideration. No--easier to dash up the stairs, tear his bedroom apart for what he wanted, and dash back down with his arms loaded and his feet sure on the steps he’d been descending for centuries.

Crowley let the angel pull him back to his feet and cocoon him in the blankets. Aziraphale plugged in the electric one and turned it on, his fingers awkward with his haste, and he made himself slow down. A few more seconds would hardly make a difference, especially if he turned around and squandered them by accidentally turning the damn thing off again. Once it was set and warming, Aziraphale blotted the rest of the damp from Crowley’s hair and pushed it back off his forehead. 

Crowley was in no state to care what his hair was doing, but Aziraphale couldn’t bear how forlorn and lost it made him seem. It was one thing to laugh at him a bit about looking like a drowned rat when he did something ridiculous, like fall off a barge into the Euphrates or get drunk and try to swim across the Tiber, but this was an altogether different animal. 

Aziraphale rubbed his hands together and rested them on the sides of Crowley’s neck, and the demon shivered. It was the smallest of tremors, and Aziraphale tried to remember if that was a good sign or a bad one. It had to be good--Crowley’s skin was losing some of that alarming pallor, and his eyes already looked a bit brighter.

“Crowley?” he asked softly.

It was answered only with a grunt, but still--better than the mute blankness that had been there when he’d found Crowley on his doorstep.

Aziraphale moved his hands so that they were at the base of Crowley’s jaw, and the faint pulse of Crowley’s heartbeat made his stomach clench. The shivering was becoming more pronounced, more energetic, and Aziraphale knelt next to the chair and began chafing the warmth back into Crowley’s hands.

“Crowley?” he asked again, after a few more minutes had passed.

“Ngh.” Crowley blinked slowly, and there was something dreadful in the way he was so patently trying to get his bearings without letting on that he needed to. Aziraphale looked away and tried to steady himself.

“You show up after hours, out of the blue and frozen half-solid, drip a gallon of rain water all over my kitchenette, and all I get by way of explanation is a half-hearted _ngh_ ,” he sighed. _You’re in the bookshop, with me. You’re safe. We’re alone. You frightened me terribly, and an accounting would be nice._

“‘sss what I get for--” Crowley shuddered, and Aziraphale reached up and tugged the blankets back into place. “--taking public transssport.”

Aziraphale went to take his hands again, and Crowley quickly tucked them inside the wrap.

“Where are my clothesss?” he asked after a moment, his brows furrowing.

“In a sodden heap in the corner,” Aziraphale said flatly. “I’ll dry them in a minute, as soon as you think you can get them on without shivering yourself right out of the chair.” He rested a hand on Crowley’s knee instead, the tremors muffled by three layers of blanket. “Are you going to be all right?”

Crowley nodded and closed his eyes. “‘sss jussst a bit of a chill, angel.”

And then Crowley’s eyes were snapping back open and he was leaping out of the chair, clumsy and shaking but still casting about like they were in danger, and Aziraphale looked around helplessly. Nothing had tripped the ward, and the only thing he felt was a fervent desire to see Crowley back in the chair before he toppled over.

“You ssset wardsss?”

Aziraphale huffed and took him by the shoulders--he was still so awfully cold--and pressed him back down into the chair.

“I thought something might have attacked you, or that you might be in trouble.” Aziraphale rearranged the blankets, draping them over every inch of exposed skin. “You gave me a bit of a turn, practically falling down on my doorstep like that.”

Crowley looked away, and Aziraphale took his chin and turned his face back so that Aziraphale could see his eyes.

“Did something happen?” he asked gently. “Are you in trouble?”

“No more sso than ussual.” Crowley grimaced and swallowed. “Jusst got caught in a rain _s_ torm that wa _s_ n’t e _xp_ ected ‘til later.”

Aziraphale wondered whether it was better to assure Crowley that he didn’t care if Crowley hissed or not, especially with his teeth still chattering, or to leave it be since Crowley clearly did. He settled for leaving it be, and for trying to rub some warmth back into Crowley’s hands. The demon didn’t pull away this time, and Aziraphale decided to be grateful for small favors.

“Didn’t you invent weather forecasts?” Aziraphale asked after a moment.

Crowley glared at him and drew himself up, pulling the blankets tighter. He was the very picture of affronted dignity, if Aziraphale ignored the shivering and the tea rose pattern on the topmost blanket and the fact that the demon was about to lie through his teeth.

“I merely facilitated a pair of departments, neither of which I have anything to do with, working together,” Crowley said. It was a practiced statement, and Aziraphale wondered if there’d been some kind of row about it in Hell.

“So yes, you invented weather forecasts.” Aziraphale smiled, and Crowley glared harder.

“It was simply a matter of synergy.”

Aziraphale tucked Crowley’s hands under the blankets, against his chest, and it was unexpectedly difficult not to lean forward and kiss the haughty expression off his lovely face. 

Crowley would be all right.

“I’m going to make us some tea,” he said. “Yours is going to have a bit of milk and sugar, and I need you to drink it and not complain, just this once.”

Crowley’s lips thinned, and then he sat back and looked tired instead of stubborn. “Jussst thisss… just this once.”

“Thank you, Crowley.”

It was a relief, having something to occupy his hands now that Crowley was coming back to himself. He wanted to fuss, to fix Crowley’s hair and his clothes and dig out one of the dozens of pairs of sunglasses Crowley had left around the shop, to set everything to rights. He was also well aware that it was the last thing he should be doing, with Crowley shaking and exhausted and clutching the electric blanket to his skin like a life vest. There would be time for that in a bit, after Crowley was warm through and through.

Once the tea was done, Aziraphale busied himself drying Crowley’s clothes so the demon didn’t feel watched while he managed the cup around his shivering. Crowley drank it without complaint, as promised, and it wasn’t until he’d finished with Crowley’s boots that Aziraphale realized he’d missed the obvious.

“Your wings!” he said, brightening.

Crowley closed his eyes. “What about them?”

“Here.” Aziraphale adjusted the electric blanket and loosened the others. “It’s a matter of surface area, isn’t it? Like a cormorant warming up again in the sun after a dive. Just manifest your wings, and rest them on the other side of the electric blanket, and I’ll cover them with these, and you’ll be warm again in no time at all.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Aziraphale asked. “There’s plenty of room in the chair, I picked it precisely because it’s still comfortable even with your wings out.”

“Angel, please.”

“Don’t ‘angel’ me,” Aziraphale said firmly. “You’re still cold, and you’re still miserable, and I’ll not have it, Crowley.”

Crowley laughed softly. “You’ll not have it.”

“No, I won’t.” Aziraphale didn’t often regret his lack of anything that might be called a commanding presence, but by God he wished there was a tone or an expression or a word that could cut short the argument Crowley’s response promised. He wanted Crowley resting and comfortable, not quarreling for the sake of it. “Not here in my own home, and not when it’s so easily remedied.”

“Well, then.”

Crowley drew himself up and glowered at Aziraphale, and there was something approaching genuine anger in it. Aziraphale crossed his arms and waited. Let him be angry, so long as he wasn’t shivering like a starveling in winter and clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering. And then Crowley stretched his wings, and Aziraphale started.

“Oh, your feathers!” he cried, before he could think not to. Crowley’s wings were bare, just skin and bone and membrane--

“An illusion, angel.” There was a depthless measure of bitterness in Crowley’s voice, and Aziraphale frowned.

“Oh,” he said. There was something he was missing, something in the tension of Crowley’s shoulders and the way he was holding those alien wings. Bat wings, Aziraphale realized. Of course they wouldn’t have feathers. But it wasn’t like Aziraphale had ever given in to the urge to run his fingers through Crowley’s coverts, the few times Crowley had manifested his wings around him over the centuries. The demon could hardly blame Aziraphale for being alarmed, in the heat of the moment, at all his feathers being missing. “Well, here, let’s get this sorted, then.”

Crowley stared at him like he was bracing for something, and Aziraphale went to adjust the electric blanket, then hesitated when it meant touching Crowley’s wings. Crowley closed his eyes and took a breath.

“I’m not going to hurt you, am I?” Aziraphale asked, as gently as he could. “They look so much more delicate than they did before…”

No feathers, no quills or down or stiff shafts all locking together to keep things off the skin or cushion any touch--just membrane stretched between fragile bone and covered in a fine dusting of short fur that looked like it might just as easily feel like satin as velvet, if the angel ran his hands over it. It might have been one thing if Crowley’s wings had been smaller or shorter and easier to keep out of the way, but they were quite as large as Aziraphale’s, and the joints looked more flexible besides. Aziraphale could understand, now, why Crowley preferred not manifesting them.

“No, angel, you’re not going to hurt me,” Crowley said. He didn’t open his eyes, and he didn’t relax, and Aziraphale didn’t believe him.

“Tell me if I do,” Aziraphale cautioned. He tugged the electric blanket into place, his eyes sliding away from the way it simply shifted _through_ the base of Crowley’s wings. He knew his own did the same thing whenever he needed to manifest them around his clothes, but it was different, watching it happen, acknowledging that strange meld of spirit and corporation. “All right, now--just fold them against the blanket however’s comfortable.”

Crowley half-spread them and clapped them against his sides, and Aziraphale traced the web of blood vessels visible just under the skin with his eyes. It was a beautiful pattern, like a new-spun spider’s web or cracks in crystal. Crowley shivered as if the angel’s gaze had weight, and Aziraphale flushed and carefully draped the rest of the blankets over his wings, pressing them against the heat source and insulating them from the air.

After a long several minutes, Crowley relaxed, and his shivering finally began to subside.

“See?” Aziraphale said, smiling. It had taken him too blessed long to think of it, but now that he had, it was working like a charm. “Would you like more tea? Or something to eat?”

“Tea,” Crowley mumbled.

Aziraphale fixed it for him and then pressed the cup into his hand, and Crowley pursed his lips. “You said once.”

“Once, as in: just this one evening,” Aziraphale said. He wasn’t going to feel guilty about getting a few extra calories into Crowley’s lean frame, not after the nasty shock to his system that the demon had suffered. “Humor me, Crowley, at least until you can stand up without wobbling like a top losing its spin.”

Crowley drank it slowly, making a face like Aziraphale had sneaked a dose of medicine into it instead of a bit of whole milk and a sugar cube.

“What did you need, anyway?” Aziraphale asked, once the color had returned to Crowley’s skin. He seemed to be thinking more clearly and something approaching comfortable, finally, and it occurred to the angel that Crowley hadn’t simply been out for an evening stroll and blundered into the bookshop by accident.

“Mmm?” Crowley grunted, raising his eyebrows wearily.

“You were coming here, weren’t you? When the storm hit?” Aziraphale prompted. “That is, I know you usually call first, so I’m guessing it was rather urgent, and now that you’re, ah, in a better way…”

“No, I was--” Crowley shivered, and Aziraphale leaned close and relieved him of the cup. He dropped his hands to his lap, and Aziraphale covered them with the blanket. “I was on my way somewhere else. Nothing important. I came here because I needed… Because it’sss sssafe here.”

He slumped down in the chair and let his head rest on the side of it, and he watched with tired eyes while Aziraphale drank his tea. It made Aziraphale’s chest tighten more than it should have, hearing Crowley call him safe. Crowley, who wouldn’t have let his guard down around God Herself, and maybe Aziraphale couldn’t precisely blame him there.

“You will be all right, won’t you, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked. It would be worth it to risk the miracle if he needed it, now that he could tell Aziraphale if it was dangerous.

Crowley nodded heavily and pushed himself back upright. “Just takes a bit out of you, that’s all.”

The wind changed outside, and Aziraphale could hear the rain pattering against the windows out in the main room. He bit his lip. He couldn’t bear to think of Crowley wandering back to his place alone, of sitting by the phone, on pins and needles waiting for a call that might not come letting him know Crowley was home safe. “I want you to stay here tonight. You’re in no shape to go anywhere, never mind back out into this mess.”

“Do you even have a bed, angel?” Crowley asked.

“Of course I have a bed!” It was Aziraphale’s turn to look offended. “Where do you think the blankets came from? A big nest on the floor?”

People noticed, when a person didn’t have certain bits of furniture in their apartment. And while he wasn’t as fond of sleep as Crowley could be, there were times when it was the only thing to restore a corporation. There were also times when it was the only respite from inhabiting a corporation, which, well. 

He was in no hurry to give it up, certainly, but there were days when it got to be a bit much. Usually after Crowley had pulled some cheap trick and left the greater London area choked in a miasma of kindled wrath and wounded pride, then refused to show even the least pretense of remorse over it. He’d sprawl across one of Aziraphale’s armchairs like an indolent prince, the very picture of defiance and temptation, all tarnished silver and golden eyes, and remind Aziraphale that he was a demon with that smile that reminded Aziraphale that he was an angel. He could grab a fistful of Crowley’s hair and have him on his knees in a moment, and God help him, in those moments, he wanted to. But Crowley would never yield, and as much as Aziraphale sometimes wanted to make him, he wanted far more not to hurt him, and the whole thing left him wracked with a filthy, tangled mess of frustration and thwarted instinct and need. 

They hadn’t been made to be incorporated for such a long time, had they?

Crowley’s eyelids drooped again, and Aziraphale frowned. He laid the back of his hand against Crowley’s forehead, and the demon’s eyes flicked back open irritably. Crowley’s skin was something approaching warm again, and Aziraphale helped him to his feet.

“Come on, then,” he said, pretending a cheer he didn’t feel. “Let’s see if it’s up to your standards.”

Crowley didn’t protest when Aziraphale put him to bed, which probably burned through whatever luck the angel had left for the century and definitely confirmed that Crowley shouldn’t be left to his own devices. Aziraphale managed all of half an hour of cleaning up after them and sorting things out in the kitchen before ascending the stairs to check on him. Asleep, still warm, curled up on the edge of the bed in the softest of the blankets Aziraphale had left--Crowley was fine. 

Aziraphale put his clean, dry clothes on the nightstand and tucked his clean, dry boots under the bed and set a pair of Crowley’s abandoned sunglasses on top of the clothes. Crowley was fine, and Aziraphale was fussing because Crowley not being fine had been ghastly, and he’d never seen Crowley not fine, had he? Not like that. 

He’d seen Crowley upset, and he’d seen Crowley angry, and he’d seen Crowley injured and swearing bloody vengeance and hissing at anyone who tried to help him, and he’d seen Crowley too pleased with himself by half. He’d never seen Crowley wiped blank and emptied out-- _gone_ \--and he decidedly never wanted to see it again. Aziraphale leaned against the doorjamb and listened to Crowley breathe and tried not to think of what might have happened if Crowley hadn’t made it to the shop.

He hadn’t figured on this part, had he? If he’d had a moment to stop and think about it, he’d have realized tucking Crowley away in the bedroom would lead to the choice between loitering in the bedroom, staring at Crowley in case something changed, or fretting downstairs, where he at least wouldn’t disturb Crowley’s rest. It was a pity the bed wasn’t just a bit bigger, or he could lie down next to Crowley and make absolutely certain he didn’t get too cold again. Aziraphale stopped and turned the thought over in his mind. The bed wasn’t so small, especially with Crowley perched on the very edge like he was. He could stretch out against Crowley’s back, cover Crowley with one of his wings, and keep him warm, whatever mischief the ambient temperature tried to play with his recovery. And he’d be right there if Crowley needed something, if Crowley proved to not be quite as all right as he claimed.

There’d be hell to pay come morning, with Crowley recanting every little gesture of familiarity that might have justified Aziraphale doing any such thing, but Aziraphale was willing to bear up under a tirade or two so long as it meant the demon had the energy and wherewithal to launch into them. And as much as Crowley liked to stalk around just out of arm’s reach, glaring at everything and daring danger to find them, he could hardly complain when Aziraphale took appropriate measures to deal with that danger when it finally reared its head. That it had come from the weather and not one of their colleagues didn’t enter into it.

The angel shed anything that might catch or irritate Crowley’s wings, and then, careful not to wake him, he crawled into bed beside him. Once he had Crowley settled against his chest, Aziraphale stretched out one of his wings and rested it over the demon. The ward was up, and Aziraphale was right there with him, and Crowley would be fine.

* * *

Crowley woke up slowly enough that it occurred to him--well before he woke up too fully to do anything about the idea except regret not acting on it--that perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he stayed asleep a bit longer. 

He was comfortable, more comfortable than he’d been in ages, and that was around the myriad little aches and pains and bruises that shouldn’t have been there and made him feel as if he’d been set upon by a gang of hooligans armed with wiffle ball bats. He’d drank himself in front of a bus again, probably, then been too drunk to conjure the miraculous escape quite right. Given a bunch of humans a bad scare, gotten himself knocked around a bit, and then gone home to sleep it off, probably.

He was warm, though, so deliciously warm, that he couldn’t resent the tenderness in his joints. Warm where he’d been…

Crowley crept just a bit closer to waking. Shadwell had rung with the usual lies about why he needed the month’s retainer a bit early, and Crowley had decided it was easier to cough it up than keep to the appointed day. The Bentley had been out of the question, as usual; even someone as dense as Shadwell would eventually put two and two together, seeing the same man driving the same car decade after decade. Crowley could pretend to be his own great-grandnephew ‘til the cows came home; there was no disguising the Bentley as anything other than the glorious machine it was.

He’d taken the tube, and he’d come up with some damned good opportunities for disruption if he ever needed to pull off a quick interference to get Hell off his back about something, and then…

And then a thunderstorm like the wrath of God Herself had swept up, and he’d thought, “Oh, shit.”

And then, before he’d gotten a chance to think much of anything else, a great heaving curtain of rain had slammed into him and driven every thought it was possible to have right out of his body. It had been so horrendously _cold_ , and he hadn’t been prepared for it, had he? He’d been just within reach of conjuring himself a dry patch, a little buffer against the weather, and then the rain had struck him. Great fat drops the size of hailstones, thousands of them with every new second, each one landing like a slap, and all of them hurtling out of the frigid stratosphere and right onto his skin.

It had all happened so quickly. The breath had been driven from his lungs, the warmth and strength stolen from his muscles, the quickness from his mind. The rain had poured over him, and the wind had cut through him, and suddenly he’d been little more than a wretched animal scratching for shelter.

He hadn’t known he could get that cold and not die from it.

How had he even gotten home?

Crowley woke a bit more as the impossibility of it dawned on him. No Bentley. No cabs out in that roil. He’d never made it to see Shadwell, and even if he had, the witchfinder would, maybe, have called an ambulance, assuming he didn’t just slip off and pretend it didn’t involve him. Crowley would be in the hospital, if it was Shadwell. But he was warm, and safe, and comfortable, and…

_Safe_. The word caught at him. He was a demon with a vigorous and well-established trade in pulling the wool over Hell’s eyes. Safe wasn’t something he could ever be.

He inhaled and stretched, the inexorable clamber toward opening his eyes and confronting whatever he’d gotten himself into finally beginning. The air smelled like a well-laundered down comforter and tea and gingerbread and...

Crowley finally woke all the way. Tea and gingerbread and Aziraphale. That had been the last thing he’d thought, that flaming beacon in the cold, frightened darkness of his own dying brain: the bookshop. The angel.

He squirmed slightly, checking his corporation. Sore. Tired. He’d tested it to its limits. But he was lying on a bed and under a comforter, and he was wrapped in a soft blanket, and there was sunshine on the other side of his eyelids, waiting to make him regret it when he opened them. He’d come to Aziraphale, and the angel had saved him.

Crowley sagged against the mattress. He’d come to Aziraphale, and the angel had probably had to all but scrape him off the sidewalk. He wracked his brain. What had he said? What had he done? It was a merciless blank, full of everything he’d bitten his tongue over in the past six thousand years, every weakness he’d never shown, every little whim and persistent want that the angel would never forgive him for. Aziraphale was too good to turn him out while he still needed help, too good not to pity the cold-addled demon who’d said too much and thrown the whole of their arrangement into a much different light. No, that would come when he opened his eyes, sat up, and said, “Good morning, angel.”

He could put it off, though. He could go back to sleep. He could sleep for a decade, if he really put his mind to it. He’d slept for damn near a century, once, when he’d really lost hope in humanity. Maybe by the time he’d slept away the rest of the ‘80s, Aziraphale would have forgotten all about whatever stupidity Crowley had let slip while he’d been thawing out.

A shudder ran through Crowley’s frame. Aziraphale still remembered what they’d had for lunch in Paris during the Revolution; a handful of years wasn’t going to do it. His wings slipped out from under the blanket, and he blamed the stress of almost dying of exposure for the long moment it took him to realize why a spark of dread flared in his chest.

His wings.

He’d manifested his wings, like the idiot he was, and Aziraphale had seen them as they truly were, and Satan help him, maybe he could slither out the window and down the drainpipe and never have to see the look on the angel’s face.

And then the solid block of warmth at his back moved-- _Aziraphale_ moved--and Crowley’s heart skipped a beat. Fingertips traced the bones of the wing not pressed against the bed, gentle and careful and warm, skipping lightly over the claw at the joint and moving down toward the tip. Crowley held his breath, frozen, and then they drifted over the skin between the bones, stroking downward, almost petting it. Then the fingertips were gone, and the angel sighed, and Crowley felt him tug the blanket back up, tucking it in around Crowley’s shoulders.

He’d come to the bookshop, and Aziraphale had probably all but had to scrape him off the sidewalk. He’d manifested his wings, and Aziraphale had cleaned him up and put him to bed and then lain down beside him to keep him warm. 

There would be no escape, no delay, no space between opening his eyes and facing judgment.

Except… Crowley flexed his wing slightly against the wrap. The angel hadn’t been rearranging the blanket so he didn’t have to look at them anymore. There had been no horrified recoil, no polite draping of Crowley’s shame. Aziraphale had seen his wings, and Aziraphale hadn’t been repulsed. Aziraphale had reached out and touched them, of his own volition, like they were something to be careful of. Perhaps, somehow, the judgment would be a vindication. 

What would happen if he asked the angel not to stop? Would it be so dangerous to ask him to do it again?

Crowley took a breath and tried to smother that heedless, foolhardy hope. Hand Aziraphale even more power over him than the angel already had? He might as well just fall on a flaming sword now and have done with it. The flicker of want in his blood grew, spread in spite of his best efforts. The angel’s hand had been so terribly gentle, his touch so light. If Aziraphale would give him this, if he could have this--it’d be worth it, wouldn’t it? 

He went to roll over, and Aziraphale slung his arm across Crowley’s waist and held him still.

“For the last time, Crowley, the ward’s just a precaution,” Aziraphale mumbled, almost in his ear. Gooseflesh prickled at the back of Crowley’s neck as the angel’s breath puffed against his skin. “Everything’s fine, go back to sleep.”

The comforter on top of them flared, then settled more closely around Crowley. Not a comforter, then. No, not a comforter at all. There was a wild sort of laughter bubbling up in Crowley’s chest. He opened his eyes all the way, and that ocean of snow-white feathers was all he could see for a moment, the view from beneath one of Aziraphale’s wings. This wasn’t--Aziraphale wouldn’t--what had he even said, just then?

“The ward?” Crowley repeated, dumbly, and then he felt it. A shimmering, glittering shell of divine magic rippling around the bookshop, more than enough to make anyone looking for trouble regret it both a great deal and instantaneously. “Hell’s bells, angel, what’d you think was coming?”

“Ah.” Aziraphale inhaled sharply, and the arm around Crowley’s waist was abruptly retracted. The mattress dipped under them as Aziraphale slid away, and his wings disappeared, and that glorious, comforting warmth was gone. Crowley wanted to grab at him, shove himself back into the space between the angel’s arms, pull that absent wing back over them. 

He really ought to have stayed asleep, and it was too late now to fix it. Crowley rolled over and sat up, his eyes sweeping the room. 

The angel’s little flat above the bookshop as viewed from a position he’d never thought to occupy, and how many times had he wanted to smirk and make some untoward joke from the bottom of the stairs when the angel went to change for dinner? Yet here he was, clothes who even knew where, in bed with Aziraphale and watching him shake the rest of the sleep-heavy languor from his soft frame and pull back to the other side of the mattress to put a decent amount of distance between them, now that Crowley could appreciate the closeness. 

“I didn’t have any idea what might be coming, now, did I?” Aziraphale asked, blushing. “You were in a bad enough way that I didn’t want to take any chances, and it’s not like your friends play fair.”

Crowley stopped, and his hand bunched reflexively in the sheets. “What?”

“You showed up looking like you were on the verge of discorporation, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “Of course I made a few assumptions at first! And then it took forever to get you warmed up to the point where you could tell me it was an accident, and it wasn’t like I was going to take the ward down at that point, was I? Better safe than sorry, you know.”

Crowley rubbed at his eyes. Why had he picked Heaven’s biggest idiot to fall… No, that was dangerous territory, even inside his own skull. He’d picked Heaven’s biggest idiot to strike a mutually beneficial arrangement with. He stood up and wrapped the blanket around him so that it draped more like a robe, hoping to reclaim some of his lost dignity. The very idea of Aziraphale--gentle, tender, _ridiculous_ Aziraphale--risking discorporation or worse to protect _him_ made him want to burn something down.

“Angel, if something comes for me, you get the hell out of the way and stay there,” he said firmly. “You understand?”

“Oh, of course,” Aziraphale snorted. “Just like if something came looking for me, I’d be on my own.”

“You would be,” Crowley lied.

“Which is why you keep trying to throw yourself between me and some imagined threat every time you notice the wards again.” Aziraphale pushed himself up the bed to lean against the headboard and crossed his arms. 

Crowley wanted to wipe that knowing look off his face, wanted to shove him back down on the mattress and wrap his fists in that soft linen shirt and remind him that Crowley was a demon. Wanted to, and didn’t dare, because it was one thing to smile in the face of the angel’s indignation and clutch that little dagger of pain to his breast when Aziraphale turned away in anger and disgust, and it was another thing entirely to lay hands on the angel and have him bare his throat and say, “I forgive you.”

Aziraphale would, and Crowley knew it--knew it as sure as he knew he wouldn’t survive it, if it happened. It would break him. It was bad enough that Aziraphale had him at his beck and call, bad enough that he’d had to trade away so much of the upper hand just to get Aziraphale to agree to the arrangement, bad enough that Aziraphale knew all he had to do was give Crowley that sad, hopeful look and Crowley would do anything he wanted. If Aziraphale knew Crowley couldn’t even raise his hand against him without all but unmaking himself…

“I wasn’t in my right mind, earlier. Satan only knows why I was doing that.”

“You’re being absurd, Crowley. I’m hardly going to abandon you after all this time, and I think you know it,” Aziraphale said finally, shaking his head. “Get dressed, come downstairs, and have some breakfast.”

Crowley flushed, hated himself for it, and clutched the blanket more tightly about him. “And my clothes are where?”

As soon as the question was out of his mouth, he saw the tidy pile on the nightstand. The angel had even found a pair of sunglasses for him somewhere. Miracled them up, most likely.

“Right there. Boots are under the bed.” Aziraphale got to his feet. “How do you take your eggs?”

It had all been handled so neatly, so cleanly. It cost the angel nothing at all to take him in hand, and then he turned around and refused to acknowledge that it was even what he’d done. He glared at Aziraphale and flared his wings, stretching them wide across the window and immediately throwing the bright, sunny little room into shadow. Perhaps the serpent took his eggs raw and still in their shells and swallowed whole, and what then?

Aziraphale’s eyes traced the shape of his outstretched wings, and then he looked away, and Crowley felt that familiar, keen sting just under his heart. He might be the angel’s, but the angel would never be his. The pain was a small price to pay for the reminder of what they were to each other, a small price to pay to keep that last bit of himself free. 

“I’m sorry I touched them without asking first,” Aziraphale said quietly, not looking at him. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? You said I wouldn’t, but then, you don’t always tell me the truth.”

Crowley hissed and closed his eyes. Damn the angel for looking away and then saying things like that.

“No, you didn’t hurt me.” Crowley’s jaw tightened. He could stop now. He’d made his point. There was honeyed venom in his voice when he asked, “Did you find them pleasing?”

Aziraphale flinched, just as he’d known he would. Crowley felt it under his ribs, just as he’d known he would. And then the angel took a deep breath and met Crowley’s eyes, and Crowley was sure he’d had the same revoltingly determined, brave look on his face when he’d set the ward and come what may.

“They’re very soft, Crowley.” Aziraphale paused as if he might falter, then squared his shoulders. “And they’re very beautiful. I wish you didn’t hide them like you do.”

Crowley swallowed around the dryness in his throat and looked away. He could leave now. He could conjure on his clothes and sweep out the front door and avoid Aziraphale until enough time had passed that even the angel would understand that they weren’t to speak of this again. He could pretend he was his own, and take some hollow comfort in that lie, provided he was willing to deny himself the better, sweeter comforts the angel’s answer promised.

He sat down on the edge of the bed facing Aziraphale, let the tension drain out of his wings, and tilted his head in invitation. Aziraphale blinked at him, then slowly lowered himself onto the bed and sat across from Crowley. He reached out his hand and let his fingertips glide over the web of veins still visible against the light from the window. The hesitant caution gradually faded from Aziraphale’s eyes, and Crowley watched affection and wonder take its place. A thrill ran down Crowley’s spine, and he stretched his wing, pressing it harder against Aziraphale’s hand. 

Aziraphale kept his touch light--gentle, careful, as if he was handling fine china or old lace--even when Crowley might have preferred something a bit rougher, a bit hungrier, a bit less in control. But then, it wasn’t such a bad thing, an angel being careful. There were worse things in the world than an angel being careful.

Crowley leaned forward into it until he was leaning on Aziraphale, and the shock of pleasure at the angel touching his wings was balanced by the feel of Aziraphale’s strong hands on his waist. Less careful, there, but no less gentle. Crowley let the blanket fall away and tugged at Aziraphale’s shirt, and Aziraphale surprised him by kissing him.

They toppled sideways onto the bed in a snarl of limbs, Crowley trying to pull Aziraphale’s clothes off around the extremely effective distraction of Aziraphale kissing the demon everywhere he could reach. When Aziraphale’s mouth found the juncture of shoulder and wing, Crowley dug his fingers into a pillow and pressed his face into the mattress to keep from screaming with it. When he was sure his voice wouldn’t betray him, he caught Aziraphale by the hair and dragged the angel off his back.

“Your clothes are coming off,” Crowley panted, “and they’re coming off in the next thirty seconds, and if I have to do it with my bare hands, I can’t promise how much is going to be fit for use again afterwards. So, fair warning.”

“That’s fair warning, is it?” Aziraphale laughed. His hand closed around Crowley’s wrist. “If you want me undressed, you’re going to need to let go.”

Crowley’s fingers tightened in that pale blond hair--and it was like silk, just as he’d always known it would be--and he twisted around so they were face to face.

“Figure it out,” he growled, tipping Aziraphale’s head back to bare his throat.

And then he was sucking at the angel’s neck, his tongue darting over that untouched skin, and Aziraphale clutched at his hips and arched against him, and the small, helpless noise that escaped him made Crowley feel like the world might end if Aziraphale sent him away now. Aziraphale waved a hand, and his clothes vanished, and Crowley found himself on his back with Aziraphale kneeling between his thighs and kissing his way up Crowley’s chest, swan-white wings spread to cover them both.

It was impossible, Crowley thought. This wasn’t something he could have. He was dreaming. Or he’d been discorporated, and he was back in Hell, and they were having a bit of fun at his expense. 

“You don’t want me, angel,” he breathed.

Aziraphale stopped, pushed himself up, and shifted so that his face was right above Crowley’s. He brushed his fingers through Crowley’s hair, and then he tilted Crowley’s chin up and kissed him slowly and thoroughly.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Crowley,” he said, and there was no arguing with that voice. He meant every inch of it, every word he was saying, and Crowley could feel it reverberating in his bones. That voice had helped part the waters. That voice had helped call forth the earth. “You had me half out of my mind when I didn’t know what was wrong, when I didn’t think I could help you.” He kissed Crowley again, and there was all the hunger Crowley could possibly want in it. “I could no more get out of the way and leave you in danger than I could cut out my own heart.”

“Pretty words,” Crowley murmured, hands tightening on Aziraphale’s back. _Keep saying them. Don’t let me wake up._

“You can be such an idiot sometimes,” Aziraphale said. He nudged Crowley’s mouth back open. “Even still, I love you.”

“You love everyone,” Crowley reminded him, when Aziraphale dipped his head to kiss his cheek, his neck, his shoulder. “Part of the job description.”

Aziraphale’s weight shifted, and he moved back up so that he could look at Crowley’s face, and Crowley wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The angel was about to spill that unrelenting fucking mercy of his absolutely everywhere, and there would be nothing to do but suffer the onslaught.

“It’s different with you,” he said quietly, and there was nothing but truth in his voice, and Crowley was fixed there by it as cleanly as if Aziraphale had slid a sword into his belly. He shivered beneath Aziraphale, and Aziraphale ran a gentle hand through his hair. “I miss you, when you’re not by my side.”

“You’ve gone centuries without so much as speaking to me, angel,” he pointed out.

Aziraphale shook his head. “You’ve gone centuries without so much as speaking to me, Crowley. And it was easier to endure because I knew that, if it came right down to it, I could find you. You were there, and I could go to you, if it got to be too much.”

Crowley wanted to deny it, wanted to find the words to make it untrue. Every little torture he’d inflicted on himself when he deliberately provoked the angel, and it was nothing to this. 

How many times had he found his own excuses, clawed them out of fallow ground and invented them from whole cloth? How many times had he promised himself Aziraphale would never know, could never know, when he made up some answering assignment of his own to whatever it was that Heaven was asking of Aziraphale? When he said, “This will be tricky, we should figure it out over dinner.” When he said, “Oh, bad luck. Let me stand you a round, least I can do if you’re pulling this one.” When he burst into a church to save Aziraphale from certain discorporation, when he saved the books from the blast just to see the relief on Aziraphale’s face, when he left without even hinting that Aziraphale owed him one because he couldn’t have borne the angel’s laughter.

_You needed to speak to me?_ Aziraphale had asked.

_I needed you,_ Crowley had never dared answer.

Aziraphale’s hand clenched in Crowley’s hair, and he groaned at it.

“Do you understand how empty the world would be without you in it?” Aziraphale demanded quietly. He shook Crowley gently, purely for emphasis, and Crowley clung to him. “How it feels to think of you, gone for centuries because you were careless with your corporation? Gone _forever_?”

The holy water. Aziraphale had been so furious when he’d asked for it. Aziraphale had only given in when he’d understood he couldn’t prevent it. Crowley hadn’t been able to reason through his change of heart at the time, but it had only ever been desperation, hadn’t it? Desperation and fear and loss, the same as Crowley had felt when he’d first gotten wind of that double-agent nonsense back in the ‘40s with barely enough time to stave off disaster, and now Aziraphale’s hands were tight enough on him to believe the angel never meant to let go again.

“I wouldn’t, angel,” Crowley said, conjuring a smile. He hadn’t been able to make Aziraphale believe him, before. Maybe he’d listen now. “You know me better than that.”

“I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t _mean_ to.” Aziraphale deliberately relaxed his grip on Crowley’s hair and kissed him again, and the heat of it surged through Crowley’s veins. “Accidents happen, you reckless creature.”

“It’s not reckless if you can back it up.” Crowley wound his arms around Aziraphale’s waist and held him close. Reckless, said the angel who’d taken a demon into his bed.

“It’s not reckless if--” Aziraphale frowned and shook his head. “ _Impossible_ creature.”

Crowley smirked. “One of the Fallen. Part of the job description.”

“Yes, well.” Aziraphale cupped Crowley’s jaw and ran the edge of his thumb over Crowley’s chin. The look in his eyes made Crowley want to turn away. The look in his eyes made Crowley want to never turn away. “Good thing I was here to catch you, this time.”


End file.
